He also shook hands with Egypt’s authoritarian leader during White House visit, saying that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was barred from the White House for the past four years, is doing a “fantastic job.”

“Amélie” opened on Broadway this week. “It is pleasant to look at, easy to listen to and oddly recessive.”

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Teri

Teri Anulewicz is a Democrat and is running unopposed in the November 7 special election for House District 42. She represented Ward 3 on the Smyrna City Council from 2008 until 2017. A native New Orleanian and quasi-Texan, Teri graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1998. She's been a front page contributor since 2015, and she compiles each Tuesday's Morning Reads.

Depends on who you ask. Will you like it? No. Will the Freedom Caucus and Tuesday group love it? No, but hopefully they understand now that they can like it as a first step. There are things that they can pass outside of a full repeal that gives the Secretary of HHS a broader ability to do certain things administratively with waivers and other items. We will see what comes out today, but there is a chance something passes by the end of the week.

Passes the full House by the end of the week or passes committee by the end of the week? Curious as to the procedural standing, is this a new bill or a microwaved AHCA? No CBO score prior to the vote, I’m guessing?

I think you’re right that this will get through the House. Politically, Ryan and the party can’t afford another public failure on this issue. I’m not sure how a bill that allegedly eliminates EHBs will fare in the Senate, but I’m going to guess the House’s thinking is “not our problem.” With AHCA polling at 17% prior to the vote, I’m anxious to see what the more conservative version will register, especially when Trump talked such a big game about solving the opioid crisis.

Not sure what the name will be, but I’d assume it’s the AHCA with major tweaks. It will need to pass the full house by Friday. I don’t believe it eliminates EHBs. It allows states to determine what meets those benefits and or ask for a waiver to the EHB if they can show they have a better way to provide coverage that meets those needs. Again, I know you won’t like that, but there are senators that could live with that.

As the end of the article (and Eiger’s above response) indicates, the “sell” is going to be some version of “we’re giving power back to the states.” I don’t know how well that messaging will play, quite frankly. Democrats effectively hammered AHCA the last go ’round. I’d imagine they can be successful again if some of the reports re: EHBs and pre-existing conditions come true. “Paul Ryan wants to cut taxes for the wealthy on the backs of cancer patients” is a pretty solid line of attack.

The fact that they want something done by the end of the week indicates that House Republicans are wary of seeing angry constituents next week. Not doing anything means the conservatives show up to the town hall and yell at you. Passing the bill means George Soros’ paid protesters show up to the town hall and yell at you. Dropping it and not voting means both show up and yell at you.

April 4, 2017 12:53 PM

The Eiger

I think that this article clearly shows why passing a major piece of legislation isn’t as easy as some people out in the everyday world would think. Guaranteed issue/community rating is a very serious topic for many people, on both sides of the argument. I would also say that Andrew and other Democrats would not necessarily dispute the fact that guaranteed issue/community rating has increased insurance cost for many people because that was the point. Make people who can pay more pay for those that can’t.

The problem that I and many on my side of the argument that have with community rating and guaranteed issue is that is does what it’s designed to do to well. Drive up costs. What we would prefer is to drive down costs for everyone so that someone with a major diagnoses isn’t priced out of the insurance market place. It you can make it cheaper to care for that person it is then cheaper to insure them. I do however believe there are many in Congress who are short sighted and think that simply by doing away with community rating the problem goes away. It won’t. It will simply put us where we were in 2007.

There has to be something to fill that void and there has to be a transition time during that void where both community rating and guaranteed issue have to stay for a short time. If you do away with them and costs have not come down you are screwing people. If you leave it you are screwing people who are younger or do not have major health issues.

Again, the solution is to start driving down costs of providing health care (pharmaceuticals, medical devices, primary care, long term care, deliver systems, durable medical equipment…everything.) You do that by stop taxing the shit out of all of it. Yes we need taxes, but the 2% of gross on medical devices is craziness. Someone has to pay for that. It’s me and you and your grandmother that needs a new heart value or knee.

Next you address the burdensome regulations that have been put in place. This could be a post all on it’s own, but there are hundreds of thousands of regulations that do nothing to help a patient or drive down costs. Those need to be gone through with a fine tooth comb and repealed. Most of that luckily can be done administratively at HHS.

I’ve got to run. I’ll post more later if I can.

April 4, 2017 1:45 PM

Ellynn

See, the two of you can have concise and opposing opinions – plus be informative.

Thanks for the input gentleman.

April 4, 2017 3:25 PM

The Eiger

I will admit that I am full of snark, but do try to be as informative as I can most of the time.

April 4, 2017 3:35 PM

Andrew C. Pope

I have nothing but respect for Eiger. Takes guts to be that wrong all the time. 😉

April 4, 2017 3:51 PM

The Eiger

This coming from the guy who’s team governed so well that they lost to Donald Trump………..

April 4, 2017 3:53 PM

Andrew C. Pope

Touche.

April 4, 2017 3:57 PM

ScottNAtlanta

So, by your logic, they want to take a law that roughly 50% of the country is happy with or would like to see fixed and replace it with something roughly NOBODY likes…somehow that doesnt equate with good governance. It sounds more like a load of crap (as you like to say so often)

It’s hard for people to know what is in the bill when members of Congress are sometimes too dumb to talk coherently on the topic. Of course people are scared of the changes in the ACA. The republicans have done a terrible job of selling it because they prefer to fight themselves. I will eagerly agree that many of the members of the freedom caucus are full of crap.

To echo, it’s also hard when you have a President that hasn’t read the bill, doesn’t understand how the current system works, and doesn’t care enough to learn any of it. Trump should be using the bully pulpit to sell this thing and drive one coherent, positive message. Obama, for example, spent a great deal of time making the pitch for ACA through town halls, speeches, interviews, etc. Trump has done no heavy lifting on this thing whatsoever and it’s put the GOP at a disadvantage.

I e-mailed someone at GDOT the following. It may not merit implementation, but am including it here that it receive for a wider audience in event that it does.

“The flyover from eastbound I-285 to northbound I-85 was often congested outside of peak periods prior to the I-85 viaduct collapse. Since I-85 closure is significantly increasing traffic using the flyover, I suggest that GDOT consider implementing the following measure:

Close the northbound I-85 right lane at Moreland Interchange from north of the exit to Northcrest Road north to the I-85 eastbound to I-285 northbound on-ramp, and allow two lane movement from the flyover to northbound I-85. Northbound I-85 traffic at Moreland Interchange is no doubt more since the I-85 closure. Eliminating the present two lane to one lane merge at the end of the I-85 eastbound to I-285 northbound flyover would reduce flyover congestion, a circumstance that tended to clog the flyover in off peak hours even before the I-85 viaduct collapse, and congestion that often extends back onto eastbound I-285.

It would of course be necessary to provide a break in the I-85 northbound right lane closure for I-285 westbound (northbound) to I-85 north on-ramp traffic. I think the distances from the Northcrest Road off-ramp to the I-285 westbound to I-85 northbound on-ramp, and from that on-ramp to the I-285 eastbound to I-85 northbound (now two lanes) on-ramp are sufficient for tapered right lane closure. Since I-85 will be closed at the viaduct for months, I-85 north could be temporarily restriped to close the right lane as described above. Alternately restriping could occur after implementation is determined to be worthy of a try and implementation is found to be effective.”

I think a diagram would get that point across much better than words alone…I got a headache just trying to sort out what you were saying. Make a diagram, and share it on some photo sharing site like imgur.com and post a link

Dave interposed 85 and 285 in this sentence: ” I-85 eastbound to I-285 northbound on-ramp” so that probably adds to your confusion.

Of course that interchange is complicated and I agree with your solution as a stopgap since 85N rarely backs up below the perimeter I doubt losing a lane would be an issue. There are other issues that exacerbate the traffic on the flyover during backups including people taking the 85S exit from 285E and crossing over 3 lanes to exit on the 85N ramp provided for the vehicles entering from Buford Hwy. that merges halfway up the flyover. Also 285W traffic that take the Northcrest exit and crossover to merge with the flyover traffic to 85N before it becomes exit only to Northcrest. This is especially popular with some 18 wheelers who like its tamer curve to the 285W to 85N ramps. The problem is in high traffic times they have to use big guy privilege in their merging thus exacerbating the flyover traffic even more.

Whoa Nellie is right. The request to unmask the names is not illegal. If it were, the request would have been denied. It is only a felony for Rice if the names were then leaked by Rice. Do you have evidence that Rice leaked the information? Or that Rice conspired to have the names unmasked so that they could be leaked? That is a problem with a lot of the partisan – whether left wing or right wing – media reports. They go straight from A to C – or even A to F – while skipping over the intermediate steps. In this case we have A) Rice requested the information and C) the information was leaked (based on my presumption of your calling for jail time) but that leaves B) did Rice leak the information OR collaborate with the leakers to be dealt with.

OK, so someone with no credibility (the pizzagate guy) runs a story he says he got from Bloomberg because they wouldn’t run it, then when Bloomberg does run it they say it’s all likely legal. Then another outlet with no credibility goes to a former US attorney with no credibility who claims a bunch of new info even though he hasn’t been in the government since about 1988.

With apologies to Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), “I love the smell of subpoenas in the morning. It smells like…victory!” The question is, fellas, is whether or not she takes The Fifth. And I ain’t talking Jim Beam. Lord, this is good! Just desserts for a proven liar.

This be abusive use of government resources on your political opponents. It’s one thing for ‘ol Noway, as a private investigator, to do Opposition Research on Senator Snort. (Don’t you just love “Grin and Bear It?”) It’s quite another and quite chilling, actually, for Uncle Sam to be doing it!

LOLOLOL! David Brock?! Do you people have trouble sleeping at night? It must be exhausting trying to do anything, defend any-damn-illegal behaviors to protect Hilly, Barry and Susan. I’m genuinely worried for yall’s health.

So Trump friend, confidante, and former staffer Roger Stone admitted to being in touch with guccifer (Russian) and wikileaks, and specifically predicted the release of Podesta emails, and you don’t think it’s appropriate for the NSA to be looking into any and all communications that might be related to that, especially given that we were also parrying Russian cyber-infiltrators at the same time?

I’m going to be disappointed if we find out that Susan Rice wasn’t looking at that stuff, and anything connected to Michael Flynn as well.

More follow up on a rare good oped from Kyle Wingfield. Metro Atlanta needs several new highways for both capacity and redundancy … and to divert passerby truckers and tourists (those ideally would be toll lanes) far away from I-285.

Scott, interesting piece in Inman Park—-John Lewis’ stance against the parkway doubtless helped in his 52-48% win over Julian Bond in the 1986 5th CD runoff…I suspect a lot of folks saw the Presidential Parkway (Freedom Parkway) as a “Trojan horse” to bui;ld the Stone Mtn Freeway—I mean, the parkway would have been about a third the length of the proposed SM Freeway, so heck, if you finish the first third, you may as well finish the remaining two-thirds. No one was fooled by the story that Carter’s library would have so much traffic, we needed a parkway for that reason.

When you ram an interstate through a walkable neighborhood in northeast Atlanta, you are imposing a car centric lifestyle on people who don’t want it.

Not only do we not have the interstate infrastructure for free and easy commutes from some exurb, we also lack the arterial road infrastructure to get cars to their destinations. It’s far far far too late to fix that though. It’s much easier to live closer to where you work.

It is easy today to criticize those who “did not know better” 60 and 70 years ago designing Atlanta’s expressway system—but who then would have figured today we would have some 6 million in the general area? Furthermore, Atlanta started its expressway system before the 1956 passage of the Interstate act—for instance, the first stretch of the system opened in the fall of 1951, between Williams Street near the EY Tower and Brookwood; by 1955 or so, the Northeast Expressway was completed to Lenox Road, and construction of the Northwest Expressway (from Brookwood to West Paces Ferry) was well underway. Certainly the planners did not know in the 1940s that there would be an interstate system, but even if that had, for cost reasons—and the disruption of neighborhoods—it is unlikely they would have planned on 2 north-south freeways through the city. Heck, it took about 5 years (1959-1964) just to finish the Downtown Connector from Courtland Street to about today’s Turner Field—a distance of perhaps 3 miles at most. The amount of right of way acquisition, relocation of utilities and extensive bridge construction must have been enormous. Building I-20 through the city was very difficult, as you might surmise traveling the narrow right of way below Atlanta University. The extension of 400 into Buckhead in 1993 was the last limited-access highway built into the city—and likely the last one ever built.

Beyond 285, it gets difficult because development has spread so far out—building a Northern Arc today would mean plowing through a lot of neighborhoods in Cherokee and Forsyth. Good luck with that. The idea making the most sense would be a western by-pass of 75, from perhaps near Macon to near Cartersville and divert a lot of the Florida to and from traffic out of intown freeways and 285. It might require tolls to finance, which I have no problem with—and so that it does its job (a through route), minimize the number of exits, not one every mile or so like you see on 285.

As for interstates connecting other Georgia cities, the question is whether there would be enough traffic to justify that. The state has spent a lot of money building non-interstate four-lane highways connecting, as examples, Columbus and Macon, Albany to I-75. DOT did a study years ago on extending 185 below Columbus but found the traffic volumes did not justify it—already a lot of four-lane highways below Columbus, and you don’t hear often about traffic jams on those highways.

With regard to truck traffic, intermodal (putting trailers and containers on trains) is most effective over long distances—not so much over shorter ones—but perhaps see what we can do there. Georgia Ports Authority for instance has been working on increasing use of rail at the port to cut down on the enormous truck traffic there. Rail won’t replace the need for road improvements, but still could be of some help.

It’s going to depend on how quickly they can manufacture the precast spans. That type of cast take weeks to cure before they can release the structural tense cables. You need to find a pre-caster (maybe even 2-4) that has either room in their schedule or can push back their current orders of summer construction – AND they need to be on an accessible route for 250′ spans that will ride higher then typical overpass clearances.

They can use the existing design from when it was built if it meets the evaluation standard under the current set of codes – updated for load, wind, and seismic design – if absolutely necessary, or they can get the federal to grandfather in the prior design if it has no fatal design issue, like they did for the off ramp in LA after a tanker truck took out a section in a 10 year old design. If it is an older design with a known flaw, like the corrosion issue of I-35 over the Mississippi in Minneapolis, they would need a new design. I looked up PCI certified manufacturers in the area. There is one of Howell Road by the rail tracks that can take 14th to Peachtree to the I85 connector. Their is also ones in Conley, Jonesboro, and Hiram. I don’t know any of their cast limits. Savannah has a yard with a huge cast limit in both height, length and tension pull, but the spans would not get through the Macon connection at the end of I-16.

I have no doubt GDOT will let another contractor, if not C.W. Mathews themselves as they are the 800 lb. gorilla in GDOT projects, slide on a project date on other ones to give this one a priority. They could even go retro and use poured in place beams which require a lot more steel. Yes, one thing that cannot be hurried is the time concrete takes to cure to enable load handling under tension. The spans in this section however are only ~120 feet. Replacing the 4 sets of columns and their footings is why I’m surprised at the early date. That is a lot of heavy pours.

Non-politics question: I am getting ready to toss some really old laptops. Is there a site i can go to online to use an over write program to “wipe” the hard drives? If so , can one of you attach that link? Thanks!

If you shred them you have no worries about a software wipe. Yeah, there are programs out there that pass the old DoD standard with about 2 days of writing 1s, then 0s, etc. but this goes back to an age when pcs were $5,000 and hard drives were at least a grand. These days most everyone I know gives them to a security company that throws the entire hard drive into an industrial shredder onsite and observable by the company’s representatives. The Eiger is correct. Get a sledge hammer and work out your frustrations. If you are extra paranoid run a strong magnet over the remains.

“This is anywhere from a 10 to a 20 year process, 17 agencies, hundreds and hundreds of permits…29 different statutes…We’re going to be able to get rid of 95% of that…and still get protection.” President Trump, talking about new highway construction at ‘White House CEO Town Hall’.